Day 55: Grant Village to Madison (42 miles)
7/20
It’s 2 am. It is, at most, 35 degrees outside. My body doesn’t care — it wants to go to the bathroom. Ever the slave to my bowels, I indulge them.
Walking back to my tent, I look up at the stars. Hundreds of miles from any major city, I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many. My sense of wonder was broken by an aggressive grunting and snorting I heard in the darkness before me.
“Shit,” I had left my bear spray back at the tent.
Scared as I was, I would rather potentially contend with a bear than go back to breathing the restroom fumes. Besides, my tent wasn’t more than 50 yards away. I persevered through my fear only to discover I was hearing the snores of my camping neighbor.
Finally, dawn broke over the campsite. Lila and Aaron had run out of food the day before and so decided to eat breakfast at the general store while I had a nutritious breakfast of cheetos and ginger ale.
Since Lila and Aaron were gone, I decided to take the morning to check out the visitor center. Inside there was a huge exhibit devoted to the wildfires of 1988 that consumed the park.

That year, above average temperature, below average rainfall, and 2000 lightning strikes combined to cause mass devastation. Firefighters from all over the country traveled to Yellowstone to curtail the damage. Many animals and countless trees were consumed by flames. Fingers of blame were pointed in all directions. Now here’s the funny part: the, so called, devastating fire was actually good for the wildlife and ecology of the park.
When a place like Yellowstone goes for too long without a fire, it can begin to experience ecological stagnation. Certain species require disturbed habitat to thrive. This massive fire allowed for many creatures to thrive including owls, squirrels, and lodgepole pines.
These disturbing events, though they may at first appear irreconcilably awful, are inevitable and necessary. Wildfires allow for new and diverse forms of life to prosper. Tragic events disrupt stagnation to make room for new life. Such a process reminds one that the line between destruction and creation can at times be very blurry. Tragedy and change are features built in to the ecology of Yellowstone and life in general. Try as we may, even with thousands of firefighters, to stop it, change is eternal.

After the exhibit I met up with everyone at the general store. They had finished breakfast and were discussing the day ahead. I arrived just in time to see a bat crawling around the floor of the dining area. With Lila’s empty coffee cup, I trapped it and took it outside.
From there we set off toward our midday destination: Old Faithful. Between Grant Village and Old Faithful we would summit the Continental Divide twice. At this point we’ve crossed over the continental divide so many times it has lost nearly all of its luster and significance. Just as I crossed it for the second time, I actually got hailed on. It only lasted for about two minutes but it was exhilarating and I was thankful to have a helmet on.
Somewhere in the hail storm I had gotten separated from Lila and Aaron. We had no phone reception so I didn’t really know how to get a hold of either of them. This was sort of problematic because there were literally thousands of people at the Old Faithful visitor center. Since the spring was set to go off in about 30 minutes I settled into the crowd knowing that eventually they would arrive and we would all find each other.
In the crowd I noticed that there were people from virtually every nation. Just around me a family behind me spoke Arabic, to the left of me Spanish, to my right Cantonese, and in front of me Wisconsinite. After about 20 minutes of sputters followed by premature gasps, it finally blew.

It seems that across all nations, races, colors, and creeds humanity is united by an abiding love to watch hot water be shot out of rocks.

After the crowd dissipated I was able to find Lila and Aaron. The three of us then went to the lodge to eat our lunch and to buy ice cream. After an hour or so of sitting around we all decided to go visit the Old Faithful exhibit in the visitor center.
“It is the place where the center of the earth finds an exit and gives us a glimpse of its soul” — Anne Coe
Inside there was tons of information on the geologic forces that shaped Old Faithful and Yellowstone in general. The entire park sits atop a subterranean super volcano known as a caldera. The geothermal energy in the park has created hospitable environment for many unique organisms including everyone’s favorite bacteria, Thermos aquaticus.
Thermos aquaticus is a particularly important microbe for molecular biologists. This bacteria is known as a thermophile because it thrives in extremely hot temperatures. As such, its biological machinery is made to operate at temperatures prohibitive to most life forms. One enzyme in particular, a DNA polymerase (that which makes double stranded DNA) known as Taq, once isolated, revolutionized the field of molecular biology. Taq DNA polymerase allowed researchers to make copies, synthesize, and research DNA in a controlled lab setting. I used Taq polymerase when I worked on my Boa constrictor research project. It was nice to finally visit the home of Thermos aquaticus, a mecca for molecular biologists.


After the exhibit we decided to take a bike ride through the other geologically active springs near Old Faithful.


All were impressive, beautiful, and alien to me. After we were done with the small ones I wanted to see the big daddy: Grand Prismatic Spring. Grand Prismatic was about 6 miles from Old Faithful so we hopped on our bicycles and got moving.
I must say, bicycling is by far the best way to see a national park like Yellowstone. The traffic that everyone else is stuck in is completely irrelevant. We don’t even have to think about parking. We glided past miles of stopped cars into a packed parking lot, leaned our bikes on trees and walked up to the spring. It was beautiful.


It seems that a moose had wandered through Grand Prismatic.

The beautiful, unreal colors of the hot springs are due to the microbial populations that inhabit them. Though less romantic, admiring the hues of the hot spring is, in principal, no different from the deep blues and greens of a moldy piece of bread. The microbes in Yellowstone simply prefer warmer temperatures and a different substrate than the bread in your fridge. This is not an attempt to discount the beauty of the springs but rather an attempt to allow you to recognize the natural beauty of bread mold. Plus, bread mold has no cost of admission and little if any traffic.


After we left Grand Prismatic we set our sights on the Madison campground. We followed the river and finally saw some big wildlife: an elk! Once again, cars were stuck in traffic to see it but we were able to get up close without hindrance.

On the way to the campsite I got my second flat. Once again the culprit was a tiny rock in the hole in my tire. I thought these Schwalbes were supposed to be indestructible.

After we arrived at Madison and set up camp we all headed down to the river to swim. It was not as warm as I expected it to be but still beautiful.

When we got back we met another touring cyclist from India, one from Israel, and two Japanese hikers all at our hiker/biker campground. Yellowstone is truly an international hotspot.
We hung out with them as well as some campers from Oregon into the night until finally retiring at 11.
In the solitude of my tent I reflected on the day. The exhibits, the scenery, the wildlife, the international harmony, all of it was amazing but tempered with a dark past that few of the exhibits ever mention.
Bicycling through Wyoming and parts of Colorado, I was often reminded that this was once land that belonged to indigenous people. Yellowstone, like the rest of the country, was once native land. All of the beauty I’ve bicycled through belonged to a people cheated and massacred by the United States.
I don’t have a solution or specific policy recommendation to follow this observation but I do think it is a bloody and shameful history that should not be forgotten. The park, though it is stolen land, has become a place where natural beauty and wildlife are protected and revered. It is a place of international harmony. Yellowstone National Park is yet another example of the beautiful, horrible, complex, and cognitively dissonant place that I have found the United States to be.
